In the wake of the tragic car accident that took the life of Paul Walker and his friend Roger Rodas, the studio behind the upcoming Fast & Furious 7 — which is now months into production — faced some difficult decisions in how it would move forward after the death of one of the movie’s principal stars.

Production was halted immediately following the November 30 crash, throwing into disarray the planned July 11, 2014 release date. With initial questions surfacing about if they would have to completely start over on the film, now writer Chris Morgan is back at work rewriting the script. But how will Morgan and Universal handle the changes?

Walker had already shot about half of his character, according to a report in The Hollywood Reporter, making it difficult to easily dismiss the Brian O’Conner cop character from the movie, but also with so much footage in the can it would prove too bulky to sidestep him altogether. Plus, movies aren’t filmed in sequence, so the Walker-shot sections pop up across the board, minus the opening scene.

Universal remains hopeful the revisions are enough to bring everyone back together for a mid-January re-launch of production. The new Morgan work aims to use the footage of Walker, but also move his character—a lead and mainstay—gracefully out of the movie franchise altogether mid-movie, an obviously delicate situation that gets blurred by the business side of making movies.

Fans of the actor are certainly looking forward to the Dec. 13 limited release of Hours, a Walker-carried drama from director Eric Heisserer.

Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest covering sports design and technology, culture, infrastructure and entertainment. He writes for Sports Illustrated, Popular Mechanics, TIME and more.

The director should just end his character by a race between Brian and Ian Shaw. At that scene Ian took Brian out by hitting his car which cause it to flip over and explode similar to how Ian took out Han. Even though Paul died because of a car crash and letting his character died a similar way might offend some people, this is the only way to make sure the movie makes sense and Paul will go out with a bang.

I think killing the character is the best choice. If he just leaves it makes no sense with the character, he has been with Dom and the others this entire time. They just had one of the group killed by a new threat, what are the chances that he would choose now of all times to just up and leave, that would be stupid, hes not ignorant to think that he can protect Mia on his own, Han after all was on his own, look what happened to him. Brian, the character, would not be so stupid as to leave the group and take his chances on his own rather than stay and fight it out with them, sure, its dangerous, but so is running off alone and hoping not to be found.

Also, if they killed off the character, it would be a good thing for bringing a reality of the situation to the screen. He died, its hard to accept, but its true, we have all heard the cast is like a family, and that they were all hit hard by his event, the ability to show that on screen I think is something they should do personally. It works within the movie from a story standpoint, it makes sense, and it brings more emotion to the screen, as well as letting the actors show how they feel to some extent, because I am sure they are hurt by it just like the characters would be.

a True fan of fast & furious who love the movie, the character , the actor want to see Paul walker in his best .them should write into a new story with Paul character pass away at the end of the movie or leaving with mia to raise the baby together .should use a body double to fill in missing part of movie for Brain and honor Paul walker . R.I.P